ACQUITTED: What the Left Isn't Saying About How 1876 "Precedent Setting" Impeachment Trial Ended

The House Manager’s pre-trial brief in the impeachment trial of former President Trump has been filed at the Senate.



Today on Sekulow, we discussed the House Impeachment Manager’s eighty page brief filed today at the Senate that they captioned: “TRIAL MEMORANDUM OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL OF PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.”

That’s interesting because in the impeachment document he is referred to as President Trump but in the actual trial he is not the President of the United States. He’s a former President of the United States. I think that will be key during the trial.



They say there is no January exception to the impeachment or any other provision of the U.S. Constitution. This is the argument that you are going to see play out, at least initially. That is a jurisdictional argument. What the House managers are saying is the fact that they brought the article of impeachment in January doesn’t disqualify this trial from going forward.

If they would have held both the impeachment and the trial in January when President Trump was still in office, then yes, their argument would be correct. The problem is they didn’t do that, and that is the fundamental flaw in this impeachment trial, constitutionally speaking.



ACLJ Executive Jordan Sekulow talked about the flaws in the House Managers’ brief, specifically addressing jurisdiction, when he said:

"I read their brief, when they try to tackle what the forty-five Republican Senators did. They said that we don’t have jurisdiction here. First they pointed to the fact that there was this case from the 1800’s with the Secretary of War. But what they don’t tell you in that, is ultimately that Secretary of War was acquitted by the U.S. Senate because twenty-four U.S. Senators believed that even though he committed high crimes and misdemeanors, because he was no longer in office, that he could not be impeached. They like to leave that part out. So the Senate precedent is actually against this when it comes to voting, and it has never been done to a former President."

Bottom line: You can’t impeachment a President who has left office.

The ACLJ is currently preparing a legal analysis that we plan to deliver to the Senate focusing on the unconstitutionality of the Senate trial.



We also discussed the first new lawsuit that the American Center for Law and Justice is filing for 2021. Our legal team is preparing to file against the FBI, the State Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and National Security Agency (NSA) regarding Congressman Swalwell’s scandal relating to the Chinese national who we previously reported was infiltrating his office. ACLJ Special Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy Ric Grenell joined us to offer his analysis of the Swalwell case.



The full broadcast is complete with much more discussion of the House managers’ impeachment trial brief, the new lawsuit the ACLJ is filing, and more foreign policy discussion with Ric Grenell.